I wonder where all the "flurry of new members" went? They seem to have vanished as quickly as they came. By my count, twenty-four who'd only posted one other time or less, commented (presumably voted) on John's picture, which is about half the number of votes many of the other finalists got in total. Were they friends of yours, John?
Personally, I was really disappointed to not see Raphaella Philcox's wonderful self-portrait on the finalist list:
This very picture made Raphaella, aged 9, the youngest photographer ever to have been accepted into the Royal Photographic Society's international print competition:
allot of friends and family got wind of the comp and joined up. As you can tell by JimBob's, it was the same. But I do not have over 200 friends and Family Dennis. Wind your neck back in
I could say the same with JimBob as I noticed he got over 60 votes in an hour. But as all IP's are checked by the site's team I am safe in the knowledge that all was above board.
No Lesley, it's just that I don't appear in many of my own shots. Most of the time I just want a picture of the fish and the lure or bait as with the carp above, which was taken as an example that the hooklink material, KRYSTON MANTIS DARK, does work.
(That's another product plug Dave. Cheque as usual to my address please.)
Actually, the pike picture with me was taken by a 15 year old member of FM, Christian, but on my camera and under my direction. So here's the question, who owns the rights?
Well funny you should say about rights I had an argument years ago back in late 80's with a card company. An artist had photographed my sons team of ponies and then painted it, sold pic to card company who produced it. friend recognised kids and ponies so bought a shops remaining stock of them and gave them to us to which we were thrilled. I wanted an enlargement to frame so asked a shop to photocopy and they refused. Explained it was my son and his pony my friends daughter and her pony and the third pony my friend and i owned jointly and that we had not been asked for our permission for it to be produced . Was told by shop would need letter from card co giving permission. When I approached the card company they claimed they had the rights because they had bought the painting not the photograph from the artist . They were quite sympathetic however and did the enlargement for me. Havr you come across anythinng like that in the past things will have probably changed by now I expect.
We received a lot of late-stage votes for both front-runners from new members and old; members who had been on the site from day one, and others who signed up to ThinkCamera only minutes before the deadline. Some of the latter were grouped from very similar IP addresses, which lend us to believe these were from office co-workers or students at a university for example. However, we can only legitimately discount those who have obviously ‘shonky’ email addresses. We cannot be entirely sure whether these new members are an attempt at block voting and will disappear as quickly as they appeared, or whether a whole new office or university full of people have just discovered ThinkCamera. Only time will tell. In the meantime, we gave them the benefit of the doubt for all last-minute votes.
However, we did some deeper digging in this case. If you discount new members from similar (or identical) IP addresses, if you even discount new members with no forum or posting history, the results remain the same. Granted, the gap between first and second place – and between second and third – closes significantly, but the results do not.
This does suggest that – yet again – our attempts at making a truly egalitarian voting system still need honing. The trouble with terms and conditions is there’s always an exception you didn’t think of… which is why you get crazy-looking competition rules like ‘please do not send your entry on the side of a badger’… because you can bet that someone tried it in the past.
Raphaella's image is particularly strong, but I don't remember seeing it in the POTY submissions list. There's some powerful talent there for one so young... when I was nine, I was more obsessed by Thunderbirds than photography.
Finally, there are some good suggestions for the next round. Keep 'em coming. Woody, I'm not sure if we could do a uniquely fish-related competition (even if it would cause a migration from FM), but possibly sport or wildlife photos could cut it. Of course, if we did a fish competition, we could also do one for motorbikes, babies, golf, AV and hi-fi kit... the list goes on. All those ThinkMagic titles (ThinkBaby, FishingMagic, GolfMagic, BikeMagic, ThinkCamera, and AV Review - they are all sister websites) could share the same membership. That way, you'd get just the one newsletter:
This week on ThinkBikeGolfBabyFishCameraHi-FiMagic...
To make things right, is there anyway of coding the site so only members who have been a member for 'x' amount of weeks and have made 'x' amount of posts/gallery uploads can vote?
In theory yes. However, it does make the voting system a little difficult. What if someone happened upon TC quite by chance in the last couple of weeks and wanted to vote? Their voice would not be counted because of some kind of purdah. I'm not convinced by this, it doesn't seem particularly fair.
I don't want to lose the public vote... but perhaps the way might be in selecting a proportion of the shortlist instead and the winner is selected by an independent expert.
Right now, my problem is we keep raising the game. Both games... the images keep getting better, as do the prizes.
"Some of the latter were grouped from very similar IP addresses, which lend us to believe these were from office co-workers or students at a university for example."
I'm confused: under what conditions can this occur, if not at the prompting of the person whom the block-voting would benefit? To suggest that the results would have been the same anyway is beside the point: it'd be a bit like a politican rigging an election, and then being given the presidency anyway because, who knows, they probably would have got it anyway, without the rigging. The very fact there is any co-ordinated block-voting at all is a smoking gun as far as unfair play is concerned, surely?
Imagine you take a photograph, that you are rightly proud of. It gets nominated for an award in a competition. You tell your co-workers about this, possibly through IM or on the "let off some steam, Bennett" part of the corporate intranet. Your co-workers visit the site; you didn't ask them to do this... they visit the site because they like you and like your photograph and subsequently vote for it. All of these votes would appear from similar IP addresses (possibly many from the same IP address if you hot desk).
Is this 'vote-rigging'? At what point does votes from the same IP address constitute block voting; if we have long-standing ThinkCamera members who happen to be husband and wife and share the same computer, which one should we deny voting rights? Should we discount votes from friends and family? If we place a rule in the terms and conditions suggesting that multiple entries from the same IP address will be met with stern measures (such as withdrawing the nomination), how do we prevent the more perfidious from wiping out the competition by block voting for the other fella?
Another option is to weight the importance of the voter. If we limit voting rights to those who have made a number of forum posts or gallery images, do we create a 'senate' and in the process bias the competition in the favour of fellow 'senators'?
Ultimately, no voting system is entirely free from potential problems. We just need to find a way to minimise such things.
I love John Singleton's entry and think it's miles better than most of the others but seeing the massive votes at the death of the competition for the two front runners shows that the voting was a joke and proves that the comp COULD not WAS be won by the person with the most friends and not the best photo.
Well that's my future entries put straight in your bin and me crossed off everyones Christmas card list's
It sounds like that, for the forseeable future, it'll be congratulations for whomever has the largest contact list on MySpace and/or Facebook? Who knew, the teenagers were right after all - extensive networks on those sites really does insure success in life!
Well if it's of any use, IF I enter another comp on here I'll be keeping it under my hat as I think people on my side where more interested in the race against JimBob, and so it got silly. Believe me I was shocked sometimes when I logged on to find such scores.
I always thought Robert Patefield and Sylvia Hardy's enteries where the ones that shone through and voting up after a week showed that.
Don't be too sad, Sandman - not having extensive social networks need not be a barrier to winning. All you have to do is go down to the computing centre of your local university for a day, and hand out free chocolate bars to everyone who registers and votes for you. Better still, pay a student to do this on your behalf, and go fishing to try and beat Woody's gorgeous pike.
I am so pleased for Jimbob and congratulations to him! It is a great photo, the only thing I found annoying about it was the hands disappeared out of the frame. But that is just my feelings.
I thought that it might be a good idear for the future that twenty are being sellected, then based on public votes the first five with the most or popular votes are being put through the final stage of a competend judge to make the final decision to select the winner, based on merits while trying to see why the images were so popular. But also, I think it might be a good idear that this judge also looks upon the 20 finalists and if he or she feels that some have been voted unjustly without taking the skill of photography into consideration, where details have been ignored, has the power to disqualify and may even select a rejected one by the public for its excellence? That is why they say that the judges decisions are final and can not be disputed!
Sorry, I am just thinking out loud and it is nice to feel that you've won because your work really is good and it looks good in your portfolio to say that your work is up to winning competitions. That is something to be proud of I feel
